Samsung R20 Review Discussion

[John Ratsey]

The Samsung NP-R20 was announced at CeBIT in March 2007 but had been available in some European countries a few weeks earlier with very competitive pricing. Perhaps the key feature of the R20 is its use of the ATI chipset (ATI Radeon Xpress 1250, also known as the RS600). The R20 has a 14.1" display and provides a slightly smaller alternative for people who do not want the ubiquitous 15.4" models.

Read the full content of this Article: Samsung R20 Review

[Andrew Baxter]

Wow! Incredibly detailed review, you really outdid yourself (and me). Seems to me like a quick summary of the R20 would be "Solid but not spectacular". It's really too bad about the battery life, but looking at how small that battery is, it's no surprise.

[ejl]

nice review as usual, john. samsung really dropped the ball on the design on this one. you're right when you say it's boring...but then again, boring is better than ugly.

[Znender]

Nicely written review. I was wondering about the 3DMark06 scores. According to PCMag.com's review, they listed the Intel X3100 having a score of 630~, while the ATI X1250 having only 476. The 3DMark05 scores clearly showed the ATI X1250 as the winner.

Does Vista have an impact on the scores?

[BHD]

seems like samsung went out of their way to design this laptop with those ugly swirls.

[John Ratsey]

Seems to me like a quick summary of the R20 would be "Solid but not spectacular". It's really too bad about the battery life, but looking at how small that battery is, it's no surprise.

Also, in UK terms, very competitive pricing. How many notebook users actually need battery life?

samsung really dropped the ball on the design on this one. you're right when you say it's boring...but then again, boring is better than ugly.

The general design and usuability are good. It's the colour scheme. But black has never hurt IBM / Lenovo.

Nicely written review. I was wondering about the 3DMark06 scores. According to PCMag.com's review, they listed the Intel X3100 having a score of 630~, while the ATI X1250 having only 476. The 3DMark05 scores clearly showed the ATI X1250 as the winner.

Does Vista have an impact on the scores?

Vista's eye candy does some benchmarks (eg SuperPI with eye candy on was 1m 38s! PCMark insists on having the computer set for best Visual effects.

My experiments with different memory combinations and overclocking indicate that 3DMark06 got more boost (up to around 500) with 667MHz RAM than it got from overclocking the CPU by 50%. On the other hand PCMark05 and PCMark05 benefited from a faster CPU but faster RAM had little or no impact. These benchmarks test different features.
It is quite plausible that the X3100 could pull ahead of the 1250M in this test. We must ask Andrew to run 3DMark06 on the T61.

seems like samsung went out of their way to design this laptop with those ugly swirls.

My daughter thought the swirls were one of the better parts of the design. Much better than plain plastic.

John

[Nebelwand]

I'm pretty sure I've seen screenshots of the CCC showing a "PowerPlay" settings page... is that only available for non-integrated graphics, or does the R20 unnecessarily run its GPU at full speed even when on battery power?

[ZaZ]

I haven’t determined what the “limited” really means

A limited warranty spells out the terms under they will fix your notebook, usually parts or labor. If they gave you an unlimited warranty, you could ask them to fix it for any reason. Nice review by the way. I've never seen a Samsung notebook.

[jetstar]

Outstanding review John! Well done.

[link1313]

I like the statistics and this review had plenty, rep points for you!